


Lighthouse

by Bhelryss



Series: fegenweek2018 [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Gen, Prompt: Light, fegenweek2018, siblings....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: FEGenweek, Day 1: LightTethys skipped out on school to give Ewan a life, after their parents left them. Ewan reads his school books in the dark by candlelight, and Tethys reads along as best she can.





	Lighthouse

Tethys had told Gerik the truth, that day. She and Ewan had been abandoned by their parents when they were young. Or at least, Tethys had been young. (In her mind, Ewan had been little more than a toddling infant, which was true in a way, but her memory had made him even younger than he’d been in reality.) But young or not she’d been put in charge of a young boy and herself, with no safety net.

Without an income, the first thing Tethys did was stop wasting her time on the school the church ran. Stopped attending, stopped learning, in favor of anything that might earn her a few coppers to rub together. Dishwashing, message running, thievery lookout - anything that might earn food for her baby brother’s belly, and wouldn’t land her in such hot water she couldn’t go home to Ewan after. She always left him with the nice old homeless lady they shared a sheltered corner with, some nights. Just so she could go off to find work without worrying about him so much.

Not that it kept her from worrying. Each successful day she could come home with stale bread, or beans, or the leftovers from a restaurant that turned a blind eye when she took what they made too much of, or what customers sent back to the kitchens, and saw Ewan healthy and safe, if hungry and bored, was a good day. Really, she would count herself lucky. And all she’d had to sacrifice was her schooling, which hadn’t been especially interesting anyway.

Except, once she’d finally started dancing, and clumsily earning enough money to get a corner in an overcrowded place in a terrible neighborhood, Ewan was old enough to go to school. And, maybe school hadn’t been good for her. Maybe she had trouble finding the topics interesting and the information relevant, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t ready to fight to the death for Ewan’s right to learn it.

Because he did want to learn it. Ewan had been missing his front teeth, the grown-up teeth still yet to grow in, and he’d begged like he thought she’d say no. Like she’d insist he stay in their dingy shared apartment with the curtains closed, to keep out unsavory eyes, while she danced on street corners with slowly improving skill and a lessening desperation. As though she might laugh at his desire to learn.

She’d leaned down to kiss his cheeks, and she’d promised to get him to school. And his eyes had lit up so brightly, and Ewan had jumped for joy. And she’d gone to bed thinking of how to fit in costs of paper and ink and books and - had fallen into an uneasy sleep, and dreamed of a priest rapping her fingers as she frantically tried, and failed, to read out of the book while the rest of the classroom stretched on emptily into forever behind her.

The first day of school dawned foggy and cool, a quirk of the Jehannan coast. Ewan pounced on Tethys, tried to keep his voice low so their flatmates wouldn’t wake, and still practically howled about the first day of school. “Tethys come on!” He’d whined, shaking one of her shoulders and practically using her worn sleeping pad as a springboard. “It’s time!!” Gave her one last shake, and then bounded off to find the ink and the paper she’d put into a school bag. 

Tethys dressed in the dark, pulling on a long tunic over her performance wear. She fully intended to walk Ewan to the church, pass him off to the priests and clerics with a smile and a wave, and go to her usual corner. Soon, they’d have enough money to afford an apartment of their own in the neighborhood. Or enough money to get them out of the town, to another place. Up north maybe, if she got good enough to apply to the Performer’s Guild, headed by the queen just like every other guild. 

Ewan came home that night with smudges on his face that turned out to be charcoal. “We’re not using ink yet,” he explained readily, already babbling about his entire day and how he’d already made friends with a girl who sits next to him. “Too messy when we can’t even recognize letters.” Tethys methodically wiped the smudges off his face with a smile to hear him talk, no matter that the task was difficult when his face wouldn’t stay still for even a second. 

He yawned in the middle of a sentence, and leaned into Tethys. “Would you study with me? I have to practice my alphabet, and some words, but I don’t want to be up alone.” From the other side of their partition, they could hear the rest of their roommates getting ready to sleep. Tethys nodded, rubbed her thumb over Ewan’s cheek, and fluidly gained her feet in order to find one of their candles.

The light guttered in a breeze from the window at the other side of the room, and even in the low light she can see how his eyes sparkle. Ewan had his tongue sticking out to the side, smudged fingers gripped at a stick of charcoal. She leaned over him, proud already of how well he was going to do, and traced the letters with her fingers on her own thigh while he practiced. 

And letters turned to sentences, and candles took up a bigger part of their budget. The drapes were kept closed to keep out unsavory eyes, their neighborhood still wasn’t very nice, but with the light they could practice. And sentences became paragraphs, and here was where Ewan easily outstripped her. He took to literacy like a duck to water, though he struggled with the sums that Tethys had such familiarity and comfort with. 

“Tethys look!” Ewan said, voice cheery and the exhale making their candle flicker dangerously. He held up a piece of paper, fingers inkstained and smile huge, and she could see the huge paragraph he’d written in careful cursive, even if the words danced in her vision and the letters rearranged themselves. Another evening of practice passed, Ewan yawned and let Tethys pinch his cheeks gently before she sent him off to his own bedroll.

“Do you think you’d ever want to move away from here?” she asks, as he was falling asleep. Her baby brother loved his school, but Tethys’ spirit wanted to roam, wanted to move north to join the performer’s guild. Self-taught as she was, that was still something she wanted. “Maybe close to Jehanna Hall?” 

“Might see a mage!” Ewan exclaimed sleepily, turning his face towards the floor and muffling the words in his blankets. “Might learn magic,” he mumbled. 

Tethys took their candle in her hands, and sighed fondly. She’d do anything for her little brother. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.” She whispered, and then blew out their light, plunging their corner of the apartment into darkness.


End file.
